Losing It
by 1thousandminus7
Summary: There comes a time when the usual stuff isn't good enough anymore. There comes a time when the high is worth the risk. At least, that's what he thought. Please tell me if this isn't rated highly enough :P Probably doesn't need to be said, but contains drug use, rad sickness and blood.


**A/N: I used concept art of pre-ghoul Hancock I found on tumblr for reference. Just google it it's really cool and he's hot. Shh don't judge me.**

John stared at himself in the mirror. He looked rough, and he knew it. His hair, long, blond and usually tied back, was in tangles on his shoulders and around his face. The beat up tricorn hat that sat atop his head cast a shadow over his face in the dim light, displaying shadows under his eyes and his cheekbones. His eyes were red around the sclera, and his lower lip was bitten to shreds. The face of an addict. As his life had gone more and more downhill, he'd gone further and further to look for a high to make up for it. He'd run away from everything in his life, and even now, the mayor of his town, he wasn't happy. The need for chems tugged at his insides once more, the desire for the substances almost tangible in the burn of his blood in his veins, in the slow and sluggish way his brain tried desperately to keep up with the world around him. Mentats helped, sure, but they were affecting him less and less these days. He needed them just to feel normal, let alone to get a high. So he'd been out looking for new stuff. He knew people, and people knew people, and eventually he'd been introduced to a guy. A guy with a lab in his basement and a fridge full of every mind-altering substance he could think of. He didn't just make the normal stuff, he experimented. Cooked up things no one else could even dream of. So Mayor Hancock had paid him a visit. Bought up his supplies. Used them all. Eventually, all his caps were gone, and he was left worse than ever, the withdrawal eating at his mind and his insides. He'd gone to the guy, begged him for more. And the chemist had held out a syringe for him. A single needle, with a pale, vaguely yellowish liquid in it. He'd told him it was a new product. That it used a chemical compound mined from somewhere out in the Glowing Sea. Immensely rare, and immensely powerful. "A high like nothing you've ever experienced before,", he'd said, "And its yours for free."

"What's the catch?" John had asked, eyes narrowed.

The chemist smiled. "It's never been tested. This is the first dose ever made. I can't guarantee what side effects it will have. All I ask is you tell me exactly what it does."

It hadn't taken the despondent mayor long to decide. He weighed up all the pros and cons, everything he had to lose. Goodneighbour had Fahrenheit, if worst came to worst. And he couldn't just go back and let his sickness grow. He had to do something about it. So he'd taken it. Told the guy that if he didn't hear back from him, he'd probably kicked the bucket.

"Good luck, Mayor. I hope it gives you what you want."

And so he stared at his drug-worn face, justifying himself one more time, before reaching into the pocket of his iconic red coat and pulling out the case the syringe was in. Placing it on his desk, he put the mirror in his drawer and shrugged off his coat. Leaving it draped over his desk chair, he took the drug and sat on the sofa. He untied the flag around his waist and then re-tied it around his arm just above the elbow as a makeshift tourniquet, holding one end in his outstretched hand and one in his teeth, pulling it tight. With his free hand, he flicked the cap off of the syringe and pressed the very tip of the needle over a vein visible in the crook of his arm. The spot was bruised and sore from too many needles before, but the pain barely bothered him. He pushed it in, the feeling of a foreign object sliding under his skin uncomfortable, but familiar enough to elicit no sense of repulsion or fear. As he depressed it, pumping the strangely coloured liquid into his bloodstream, he could feel the slight discomfort, the weakness in his hand that came with it. And then the needle was empty, and he pulled it out, placing it on the table and laying back on the sofa, eyes shut, waiting for it to kick in.

And boy, did it. He felt light, his head spinning in a way that made him feel like he was floating on water, or on clouds. He felt a smile split his face, and he held up a hand, watching his fingertips dance in the air. It'd been too long since he'd felt like this. Confidence rushing through him, he pushed himself to his feet, giggling as he swayed. The room around him seemed brighter, clearer and cleaner. Re-tying the flag around his waist, he pulled his coat back on, tied his hair back untidily with a length of ribbon he had lying around and left his office. On his way downstairs, he ran into his favourite bodyguard. Fahrenheit gave him a look, raising an eyebrow at his wildly grinning state.

"You're looking peppy. What sorta cocktail of chems you on this time?"

"I have no idea." He announced proudly.

"Well, you know the drill. Don't run into trouble out there."

"Don't wait up!"

And with that, he left.

The evening passed, as did most of the night. He spent hours playing drinking games and cards in the Third Rail, scratching absent-mindedly at his arm as he bet and won and bet some more. The cards were in his favour, and his sky-high mood was infectious, soon having the whole bar drinking and laughing with him. He took part in pleasures of the mind and body, the drug making every sensation ten times better. It was so late it was early by the time he returned to the old state house, his clothes and hair in disarray, lipstick on his face and in other places, his insides burning pleasantly from the alcohol and his body finally weary from the night's activities. The combination of the drug and the drink, coupled with his tiredness, was making him dizzy. He was greeted by Fahrenheit, who caught him as he stumbled over the threshold.

"Hey, hey, you alright there? I was about to go looking for you, it's almost dawn!"

"Tol' you not to stay up…" John slurred, getting back on his feet.

"I had shit to do. Now to go bed. You need to sleep this off." She looked at him, and frowned. "Hey, Hancock? You got a little…" She tapped her upper lip with her fingertip. John copied her motion, looking down at his hand. Red. He wiped the back of his hand under his nose. It came away bloody.

"Fuck." He wiped it off on his coat, and went to find something to stop the bleeding. Finding a suitable rag, he sat down on the sofa, dizziness sweeping over him once more. Fahrenheit watched him worriedly. He could feel the high wearing off, giving way to the godawful withdrawal which came after a good hit. His arm itched, prickling under his coat. In fact, that prickle was starting to spread. It ran down his spine, making him feel hot and uncomfortable. He shrugged off the coat, throwing it aside, then unbuttoned his shirt and let that join it, the blood on his face completely forgotten in the wake of this new discomfort.

Fahrenheit gasped. With his shirt out of the way, she could see the redness spreading across his skin, from his arm over his shoulder and back, like burns from scalding water.

"Hancock, what the fuck happened?" She asked, a note of worry in her voice. John didn't hear. He was too busy staring at the crook of his arm, where his skin had gone from red to blistering, patchy and crusted with blood where he'd scratched at it.

"…That wasn't there earlier…" He mused, fighting for coherent thought through what was rapidly turning from comfortable dizziness into a full-blown migraine.

"It's that damned drug you took, isn't it?" Fahrenheit stated bluntly. "I found the needle. It's that weird one you got off that dodgy dealer you've been going to, isn't it? Damn it, Hancock! Why would you take something that you didn't even know the risks of?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but instead dissolved into a fit of coughing, pressing his hand over his mouth as he coughed until he had no air left, and a metallic taste on the back of his tongue had him on the verge of gagging. Fahrenheit sat next to him, removing his hat and rubbing his shoulder as he gasped for breath. His skin felt hot, and slick with sweat.

"I… I feel sick…" He managed to get out, his voice rough. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, panic rising in him as blood stained his lips. She nodded, standing up and running off. She came back minutes later with a bucket, and he spat blood into it, cradling it as his insides roiled. His breath was coming in sharp pants, black spots dancing in his vision. He'd never felt this bad before. Never. He recalled the last time he'd been violently sick. After a battle with a pack of ferals in a tunnel, waist deep in irradiated water, he'd managed to get home only to puke his guts out in a spectacular fashion and spend the next couple of days in bed with a fever, guzzling radaway every half hour to keep the sickness at bay. Radiation sickness… He recalled what the dealer had told him. That the drug was made from stuff found in the Glowing Sea. The most irradiated landscape in the Commonwealth. "Radaway… He managed to spit out. "Get me some radaway." She looked confused for a moment, but then nodded. When she handed him the packet, he tore it open. The smell of the bitter liquid made his insides squirm, but he choked it down, gagging as he forced himself to swallow it.

He couldn't keep it down for more than five minutes. The whiskey he'd drank burned ten times worse coming up than it did going down, mixed with blood and bile and the medicine that should have saved him. Fahrenheit held his hair back as he threw up. She knew how to deal with this, often having been the one to clean him up after a long night's drinking, but even so she was concerned by this. When John was reduced to retching, with nothing left in his stomach to get rid of, he gasped and whispered in a shaky tone, "I… I'm dying, aren't I?"

Fahrenheit's eyes widened, and she shook her head. "No. I won't let you die, Hancock. You won't."

He stared downwards, his hand reaching up to scratch at his shoulder. Both were horrified when his nails tore through his skin as easily as tissue paper.

"Jesus…" He looked down at himself, the red blotches rapidly spreading down his chest. He pressed a fingernail lightly over his heart, watching in horror as even that light scratch left a burning trail of torn skin in its wake. That was when the panic started to set in, the combination of dizziness, headache, nausea and fear leaving him gasping. Fahrenheit noticed this, and acted quickly, taking the bucket off him and kneeling in front of him, looking him in the eye. She recoiled a bit when she saw that the spreading redness had reached his face, and that his left eye appeared discoloured, almost bruised on the white. His pupils were blown wide with fear, and he was practically hyperventilating.

"Hey. _Hey_." She took his hand, ignoring the stickiness of half-dried blood on his palm. "Calm down. Panicking won't get you anywhere."

He tried to take a deep breath, but it was interrupted by more coughing, and he snatched his hand away so he could cover his mouth again.

"Christ, you need a medic. Uh…" She glanced around fruitlessly.

"Don't. Don't leave me-" His words were lost in his fit.

"I have to. For your sake. Just don't fucking die while I'm gone, okay?" Then she was gone, faster than his radiation-ravaged brain could follow.

He was alone. His whole body itched but he dared not scratch it. His left arm and shoulder had blistered, he couldn't breathe through his nose and his throat felt as raw as if he'd deepthroated a spiked baseball bat. He shivered and clawed at his shoulders, blood crusting his nails, but he felt too hot, and any kind of fabric against his bare skin was unbearable. His head pounded and his breathing was shallow. He could hear his blood singing in his ears. In short, he felt like he was dying. He lay down on the sofa, having given up on staying upright a while ago. Fortunately, he'd stopped throwing up a while ago, too. He had no idea how long Fahrenheit had been gone, but every second was torture. His hair stuck to his face and neck, which were covered in cold sweat. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours by the time she came back, but the sound of the door opening was painful through his migraine. He didn't react, too weak even to look up at the noise.

"Hancock? Oh god, _Hancock_!" He heard Fahrenheit's voice, and felt her touch on his shoulder. She sighed. "He's still breathing. Please, doc, you gotta save him."

"Fucking hell. What did you say that drug was?"

"I didn't. Honestly I don't know myself. He reckons it was radioactive though."

"He injected a radioactive substance directly into his bloodstream?"

"Hey, I never said he was smart."

"Clearly."

John opened his eyes ever so slightly, glancing up at the two people standing over him.

"Still conscious, huh?" A man in a slightly grimy lab coat leaned over him. "Holy fuck… What happened to your eyes?" He began to examine the prone form of the Mayor before him, pressing down lightly on his skin in various places, causing shooting pains along his arm. He gasped a little at each touch. "I can see there has been bleeding already… Has he been coughing up blood? Vomiting?"

"Yes and yes."

"Mm." John felt a hand on his face, tilting it upwards.

"Mayor Hancock, if you can hear me, open your eyes again." He did, squinting at the light. "Okay… Bruising of the sclera, maybe burst blood vessels."

"It's gotten worse. Only one of them was like that when I left. And it wasn't that bad, either."

"How long has it been since he took the drug?"

"Ten hours? Eleven? Something like that."

The doctor sighed, and nodded. "Yeah, I've seen this before. If I stick him full of needles of rad-X and radaway and attempt to purge this I'm not gonna fix anything. He's too far gone. He'd need a bone marrow transplant in the next couple hours to recover and that just ain't gonna happen."

"So… That's it? I'm supposed to just watch him die?"

"Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is he's probably not gonna die. Bad news is he might not like the alternative."

"He's… What?"

"If you want him to survive, you get him some water, of the non-purified kind, if you can get him in a tub of the stuff even better, you let him soak up the rads and you let him go ghoul."

There was a silence. John's breath hitched in his chest. He… He was going to be a ghoul. Scarred, half-decayed, ostracised and ageless.

"Either that or you put a bullet in his head to save him the pain."

Fingers twitching, John pulled in a breath, fighting through a throat like sandpaper to mutter just loud enough to hear, "'M not ready to die just yet…"

"Hancock, are you sure?" Fahreheit sounded uncharacteristically sombre.

He made a noise of assent, closing his eyes once more.

"In that case, you might want these. Put him under for the worst of it. He'll thank you for it later."

"Okay. Thanks, doc. What do I owe you?"

"Let's say… A hundred caps?"

The sound of caps being exchanged. The doc thanking her, and leaving.

"Alright. Say goodnight, boss. Hope you come through the other side." Then pain as she took his wrist and jabbed what could only be another needle into his arm. He sighed as the pain ebbed, letting him relax, and before long he was slipping away, mind going blank as he was finally able to let go of his consciousness.

When he woke, it took him a while to place where he was. Something was wrong. His eyes flickered open. Something was very wrong. Unable to place exactly what it was, he put a hand up to his face, and practically shrieked; his nose was gone. He felt the panic in him rising as he ran a fingertip along the bony ridge framing the hole in his face. Running his hands over the rest of his face, he felt rough skin, ridged and uneven, and he was suddenly acutely aware of the lack of weight when he moved, and the coolness on his neck and head. Moving his hand over the exposed area confirmed it: his hair was gone, too. His beautiful long, blond hair which he took so much pride in, gone. Holding his hands out in front of him, he stared. His skin was warped, discoloured in places and heavily scarred, like he'd been burned. Thinking back, he recalled the events which had taken place. The amazing high, the night of fun, the way the sickness had kicked in so quickly and so badly. And the conclusion the doctor had come to.

He sat up on the mattress, looking around himself. He was in the attic of the state house, and he was the only one there. Pushing himself to his feet, he looked down at himself. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of black slacks. The rest of his skin was scarred in much the same way as his hands, and he looked thinner. Not like he'd lost muscle mass- though he'd never exactly been a bodybuilder- more like his skin had been stretched too tightly around his muscle and bone. Glancing about him, he saw someone had laid out the rest of his clothes for him. He pulled them on, glad to have something to cover himself up with. Placing his signature hat atop his bare head, he sighed. He didn't want anyone to see him like this, but he was sure there would be people worrying about him. Besides, it wasn't like ghouls were abhorred in Goodneighbour, unlike some other places. It just… might be a bit of a shock to some.

Steeling himself, he left the attic. Downstairs, Fahrenheit sat in her usual spot in his office. She looked up as he approached. Her expression was as serious as ever, but he caught a slight glimpse of a smile as she caught his eye.

"Morning. Decided to rejoin the world of the living, I see."

"How long was I out?" His voice cracked and rasped, rougher than it had ever been before.

"Nearly a week. I took the doc's advice and kept you under until you healed up all pretty."

John raised an unimpressed eyebrow. Or… he would have done. He didn't even know if he had eyebrows anymore. "You call this pretty?"

"Trust me. You were worse. I suppose you'll be wanting to gauge the full extent of the damage then?" She held out a mirror. "Just promise me you won't regret your decision. Your people miss you."

He took the mirror somewhat apprehensively. "Do they know?"

"Oh yeah. You know what this town is like. People talk. Word spreads. Half of them left you get-well-soon presents." She gestured to a pile of items, mostly chems of various sorts. Right on the top was a box of berry mentats. He eyed them up with a note of desire. But before that…

He held up the mirror. The first thing that struck him was his eyes.

"Well, damn, would you look at that…" They were black. Entirely black. If he looked close enough, he could just about distinguish the iris from the sclera, but from a distance he couldn't tell. Most of his face wore a pattern of scars, an especially impressive one adorning his upper lip. And where his nose should be was open flesh. He could see the strip of cartilage down the centre, and the exposed muscle either side. "That's… really somethin', isn't it?" He couldn't help but touch, the sensation of the tip of his finger touching something which shouldn't have been able to be touched indescribably weird, but not painful in the slightest.

"Mmhmm. At least you were out while it happened. I had to watch it all." She gave him a smirk. "It was fucking gross. Blisters, blood, peeling skin and pus everywhere. I had to cut your nose off after you nearly inhaled it." John visibly winced at that mental image.

"Please tell me you're the only one who saw that."

"Don't worry. Your dignity is safe. What little you had in the first place, anyway." He glared at her, gave himself one more once over in the mirror, then handed it back to her. Picking up the box of mentats, he took one of the small white pills, biting down and letting the taste- far too sweet and chemical to be actual berry flavour- wash over his tongue. The mental clarity mentats bestowed came quickly, wiping away the haze of his natural mind and allowing him to think over the situation properly.

"Right. Well, I suppose I'd better make my grand reappearance then, hadn't I?"

"You betcha."

He went to the big double doors leading to his balcony, pausing with his hands on the handles for a moment, taking a calming breath before throwing them open to address the people of Goodneighbour as John Hancock, ghoul mayor for the first time.

 _"Of the people, for the people!"_

 **I want to write more Fallout but I haven't got inspiration enough for a whole story yet... I'm thinking of doing something with Nick. As always, let me know what you think and if there's anything you want me to write :)**


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